Most parents are scared to let their children fail. After all, no one wants a child to feel the cold sting of embarrassment or the torment of loss. Therefore, preventing failure is exactly what our culture attempts to do by installing rubberized cocoons and calling them playgrounds, and forcing tie scores in grade-school basketball games.

We seem to forget that without struggle, there can be no progress. Without embarrassment, there can be no empathy. Without failure, there can be no success. By outright avoiding the challenges of failure and embarrassment now, we are screwing up our children. We are creating future adults too fragile to exist in a world that won’t kiss their every boo-boo and gloss over their errors.

Can we stop the madness of over-protecting our children from every one of life’s potential pitfalls? I frankly do not know if it is too late to reverse course. However, I have come up with five easy steps that qualify as the opposite of helicopter parenting that you can take right now to make a difference.

1. Don’t do your child’s school projects

It is 100 percent a douche move to do the majority of your kiddo’s school project work. If you need to live vicariously through your child’s faux accomplishments in third grade, you are a colossal loser.

And, in case you’re wondering, you ain’t fooling anyone. We can all tell your kid had nothing to do with their pristine blue-ribbon winning science fair entry. You need to step off. Let them carry into class their crappy diorama with glue streaks because that is their real output. That kind of youthful failure is to be embraced. It will encourage them to try harder next time. And the next time and the time after that. This process is called “evolution.” If you do not let your children fail then you are stepping on its throat every time you complete assignments on your child’s behalf. Stop it.

2. Don’t correct their homework

How can anyone learn when their work has been scrubbed and sanitized? How will teachers know what your kid does or does not ACTUALLY know if every answer is correct, some of them artificially, on their homework when it comes back the next day? Let your kids try to use the knowledge they are accumulating in class. Let your children fail by getting some of the answers wrong. Allow them to be corrected by their teachers. This teaches them how to process constructive feedback from someone not related to them. Otherwise, you are standing over their shoulder applying Wite-Out to their childhood educational experience.

3. Shut up during sports

Dudes, tone it down. Let the coaches coach. Let the refs and the umps do their best. Trust in the process. Stop shouting in-game corrections to your kid and their teammates. If you do have a legit beef, be an adult and voice it on the down-low without veins bulging from your neck while you sit 20 yards off in the distance. Instead, allow your child and their instructors to work through the nuances of their performance. You are embarrassing yourself, your family, and most importantly, your kid. Now sit the hell down and shut up.

4. Let ‘em fall

You’re supposed to fall off the monkey bars while learning how to get from one side to the other. That’s how this stuff works. It’s called “trial and error,” not “trial and repeated help from a scared parent.” Kids have to know what it feels like to lose their grip, to feel the beads of sweat forming on their clammy palms, and to struggle mightily to stay attached to the cold metal bars, only to eventually succumb to gravity and hit the recently rubberized woodchips hard. Dust ’em off. Give ’em a kiss. Then encourage them to try it again … if not right away, then in a bit when their courage bar refills. Soon, they will get the hang of it, literally, and the glory in their accomplishment will be enhanced for having taken the more treacherous path instead of the padded one.

5. Embrace mistakes

Too many kids are not being allowed to make mistakes in their youth, the exact time when mistake-making SHOULD occur. Kids are going to screw up. They are going to invite ants into their room by leaving remnants of a sugary snack on the floor. They are going to drop and shatter a plate when trying to carry too many dishes while clearing the table after dinner. It is our job to pull lessons from these moments and teach a better way forward. That is one of the biggest “asks” of parenthood: to have the tough conversations, to give constructive feedback to help them learn from mistakes, to hold them tight but not hold them back when they are scared of failing, to give them the space necessary to try on their own, to love at every turn.

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This blog post is part of the #NoDadAlone campaign. Fathering Together/City Dads Group, the National At-Home Dad Network, and Fathers Eve are joining forces to amplify messages that help dads recognize we are not alone! Follow #NoDadAlone on Instagram, and learn more at NoDadAlone.com.

A version of this first appeared on Out With the Kids and then here in 2015. It has since been updated. Photo by Gustavo Fring via Pexels.

She had me. I knew it. She knew it. Her logical argument had cleverly rendered my previous protests moot. After trying my best to use logic and reason to persuade her, using each trick I could think of, even bribery, she still had me. Now, there was really nothing left to do but apologize, retreat and admit I was wrong.

I opened my mouth: Nope. Couldn’t do it.

I couldn’t relent and admit I was wrong and her argument stronger than mine. This wasn’t about a female beating a male. This wasn’t the manifestation of fragile pride and ego. This was something more.

This was a 6-year-old proving me wrong.

I suppose as a proud dad, I should be filled with pride when my 6-year-old daughter is able to successfully debate me, but I’m not. I find myself just man enough to admit I get a little petty when she is right and I’m wrong. I’m not particularly proud of this reality, but kids have a unique way of exposing our weaknesses and failures. When my daughter is able to reveal an unfair decision I’ve made, or successfully argue why she should be allowed to do something after I told her she couldn’t, my first instinct is to never give in. It’s innate. It feels compulsive. No matter how wrong I am, I struggle to admit I’m wrong.

I take some solace knowing I am not alone with this affliction. No one is eager to admit they are wrong, but the pervasive tendency to resist surrender, even once the argument has clearly been lost, has become a blight on polite society. How can we as parents tackle a failing of all humanity? All we have to do is something we currently do all the time: be wrong.

Wrong-headed about not ‘fessing up

Today my youngest, who still months away from being 3, woke up from her nap prematurely. I decided since she was awake, she should eat lunch with the rest of us. She resisted. In fact, she resisted so strongly, my wife immerged from her home office to ask me if I needed help. It was good timing. I had lost control of the situation, and I was even close to losing my temper. Why? Because I refused to accept an alternate view point. I refused to admit I was wrong.

It’s certainly not natural to let a 2-year-old be in charge. I’m a big believer that the parents are always in charge, but that doesn’t mean their decisions are always right. In this situation, it was foolish of me to try and force my daughter to eat after she woke up way too early from her nap. I’ve been doing this long enough to know how illogical that is, but it didn’t matter. I said eat. She should eat. And so we went to war. She, pushing her plate of food away. Me, grabbing the plate and slamming it back down in front of her shouting, “Eat!” Yeah … real pro parenting move there. All I had to do was pause, think about the situation, and admit I was wrong.

Parents aren’t good at admitting they are wrong, but I think it’s something we need to do more often. I wonder the long term, cumulative effect of parents raising children in homes where those who are wrong admit they are wrong. Imagine if kids were raised to relent in the face of reason, wisdom and facts? How pliable would minds become? Would dogma be defeated? Maybe indoctrination would become less prevalent? Would weak minds and shallow arguments grow silent? 

We can hope.

The counterintuitive ideas are often hard to accept, but the quest to be right can only be satisfied once someone has the courage to admit they are wrong. You can trust me, because I’m wrong a lot.

Well, except this time. This time, I’m completely right.

Photo: © marinzolich / Adobe Stock.

I thought 2020 had run out of curveballs to toss by the holiday season. So around Thanksgiving our family decided to tackle a home renovation project: updating our basement.

While the bad lighting, 1970s carpet and tombstone gray wall panels had served us fine for our first three years in this house, we needed a change. A contractor friend helped us with the plans and, by mid-December, the renovations were going pretty well.

One evening after the workers had left, I started making one of my favorite dinners for the family: smash burgers! Cooking them tends create a smoky house so, as that predictably happened, I turned on the hallway fan to pull some of the smoke out of the house. But as dinner preparations wrapped up, an alarm went off. Not the smoke alarm as expected, but the carbon monoxide alarm. That can also happen with smoky cooking; however, after several minutes of opening doors and windows, the CO alarm continued ringing.

My wife and I decided to call the gas company, moving dinner with the kids to out in the car until they arrived. About 10 minutes later, as we gobbled our burgers and air fryer potato wedges in our minivan, a gas rep showed up. He examined our 25-year-old boiler which we had hoped had one more winter in it, and measured the levels of CO it emitted. He then asked me what level of CO was considered safe. I told him zero. He agreed, noting that up to five parts per million (ppm) is acceptable but it still should be at zero.

Our boiler was emitting 4,000 ppm. Had the CO alarm not gone off, my family and I would not have seen the next morning.

After some failed attempts at repairs the next day, the boiler was replaced, an expense we did not foresee having to deal with.

A damp vantage point of view

A few days after the boiler incident, Christmas Eve came to our New Jersey town along with some of the strongest winds I have ever heard. The house felt like it was going to be pulled right off of its foundation. After a harrowing night of weather, the house was intact; Santa still managed to deliver, but from my point of view our backyard fence looked like an elephant had sat on it.

After a call to our insurance company, some backyard cleaning and the opening of presents, my wife decided to take care on the seemingly never-ending laundry. Near the end of the wash cycle, she headed to the garage for something and she was greeted with half an inch of water creeping across the floor. One of the pipes from the washer had dislodged. Instead of water exiting through the plumbing, it spilled out directly on to the floor and into the garage.

All this while we were still trying to finish packing for a ski trip to New Hampshire that required us leaving our seemingly cursed home for almost a week.

But were we cursed? Was it bad mojo? Would our travels end with a broken leg or a flat tire?

My mind and my wife’s raced with these kinds of thoughts as we mopped the garage and soaked up what we could with our precious supply of paper towels. We even thought about canceling our plans to go on our well-needed vacation with our good friends.

But, that “woe is me” attitude only lasted a few minutes. Our point of view changed because our minds quickly began to contemplate all the outcomes of these scenarios that could have been.

Perspective is everything

The boiler broke and was emitting CO, but our multiple alarms SAVED OUR LIVES.  Literally. We have seen it happen on the news time and time again when people don’t have alarms at all, or never change the batteries. The inconvenience of the broken boiler for a few days pales to the tragedy that could have happened.

Our fence fell down, but our home was still standing. We have insurance to help with the cost of repair. How many times have we seen tornados or fires lay waste to entire towns with families only escaping with their lives while an entire lifetime of memories are gone in a flash?

What is a minor garage flood compared to seeing entire homes underwater when riverbanks overflow in hurricanes, forcing people to their rooftops in hope of rescue from the rising water.

Now, it is OK to be upset by your circumstances. You can be angry. You can feel like your world is caving in. You’re allowed to think the elements are out to get you. Not bottling them those feelings is important because not facing those emotions can often make matters worse.

I always try to put things in perspective when it comes to my life and remember how blessed I truly am. As bad as things seem to be at any given time, sometimes the alternative could be worse. If you use the power of perspective to examine where you are in life, where you want to be and where you could be, it will greatly shape how you approach what life throws your way. And, hopefully, it will shed light on a positive way to deal with it.

Life will constantly throw curveballs your way and you won’t hit a home run every time. It’s going to be a lot of base hits and a lot strikeouts. A. LOT. But if you learn from those experience and grow, your chances of hitting it out of the park your next time at the plate might be that much easier.

Point of view photo: © patpitchaya / Adobe Stock.

A few weeks ago, my 14-year-old son, Yosef, had a decision to make. Would his fall sport of choice be football or cross country?

While insignificant compared to the major world issues engulfing the news each night, this choice was important to him. Yosef was entering a new high school where roster spots on any other athletic team would be nearly impossible to come by.

As the season drew nearer, my wife and I detected Yosef’s self-induced pressure to make a fall sports pick was mounting. My son understood his mother and I would support any decision. I’m sure my son also understood his parents approached the choice from different perspectives.

My wife is a highly competitive type who wants to win – at everything. If she senses an ability to excel, she’s in. If not, she would choose not to go through the motions. If she were faced with the same choice as Yosef, cross country would win out.

That point of view is completely defensible here. After all, Yosef weighs less than 100 pounds, and sat the bench in his one stint as a football player in a Pop Warner team several years ago. Cross country was the hands-down choice from the perspective of playing to succeed athletically.

I am less athletic and less competitive than my wife. I like to win but would not forgo participating on a team even if I’d be relegated to a full-time role on the bench. I have never been great at any sports and was more of a “social” player — more apt to focus on having fun and playing with friends versus wins and losses.

Crunch-time call

Yosef and I spent some time driving to conditioning practices over the fleeting days of summer break before he finally asked for my perspective on how for him to make his choice.

I wrestled with how to advise him, understanding my wife and I represented two divergent paths:

• Play what you’d be decent at (cross country), or,
• Play where you’d have more fun (football)

The crushing responsibility of raising a teenager into a capable, independent person weighed on me. My response could make this choice obvious or leave him to choose for himself.

“You know, the choice is yours – not mine,” I said. “I’ll support you either way and so will your mom. If I were faced with the same decisions, I’d figure out where I’d be happiest.”

As Yosef nodded his head and gazed out of the passenger window, I knew that we’d be spending the fall season on the gridiron. I have regretted giving that advice ever since.

I do not regret allowing Yosef to make the choice himself. He’s old enough to control his social calendar.

I do not feel regret knowing that my son would spend the football season buried deep on the team’s depth chart – probably never to see the field after pregame warmups.

I do not regret not trying to more directly steer him to cross country. There is always next year.

I do regret, though, punting on the opportunity to teach Yosef about making choices in life – those that have consequences beyond the equipment needed for participation.

Telling a teenager to base a decision solely on happiness might be fine for minor things — like football and cross country — and terrible for life. The truth is, very few of the decisions Yosef will make should begin with the evaluation of his assumed, resulting joy and happiness.

Happiness not always an option

Most adult choices involve boring stuff like needs and utility. Often, I make choices based on whether the means are truly worth the end. My decisions are pragmatic, logical and done after serious opining of potential consequences.

While I’m content with Yosef sitting on the sideline this football season, I am not OK with him taking such an approach to college admissions, his studies or his future career pursuits. Will Yosef, though, understand the difference?

Have I traded the short-term path of least resistance by signing my son up for a treacherous, long-term climb?

That day, I think, I was indoctrinated into the world of parenting a teen – the time in life where I’m in the passenger seat of the decision-making minivan. I would prefer to be at the wheel, controlling the route to the destination. Or, at minimum, I’d like to have one hand on the wheel so that it is impossible for Yosef to ignore my influence during the trip.

I thought about that analogy as I waited for Yosef to immerge from the locker room, in the pouring rain, after his team’s first game (an ugly 13-0 loss that was delayed by rain midway through the second half).

He seemed upbeat for having sat on the sidelines all evening.

“Man, Dad, I know I can get in there!” Yosef was quiet, but confident.

“Just keep working, man. Control what you can. Nothing in life is given,” I replied quickly.

“Yep.”

I suddenly swelled with pride. Yosef probably will not play this year, but he sure as hell will not quit.

Maybe, after all, Yosef is learning something because of making decisions based on happiness alone.  Maybe he’s learning that the perception of what will bring joy is not devoid of hard work and suffering. Maybe he’s actively redefining what his happiness looks like.

And maybe, if football continues this trajectory for the season, next year Yosef will run cross country instead – and still be happy.

Photo: © Sunny studio / Adobe Stock.

The timeout chair had absolute and unquestioned power in our home. Until they were 4, my kids were horrified at the thought of a timeout.

But even when the timeout chair didn’t preemptively stop a temper tantrum, it still worked magic. A two-minute sentence of silence in it instantly defrayed the tension. When you got up from timeout, the slate was perfectly clean – no ill will lingered. The timeout chair had many powers, but it had no memory.

I miss the timeout chair.

Hell, I simply miss the threat of it persuading my little ones to behave better.

Unfortunately, no such device strikes fear in the heart of a middle-schooler.

Nope, my 7th grader’s miscues aren’t as definitively corrected.

And, yes, they tend to fester.

A year ago, seeing an F on Yosef’s elementary school report card would have been laughable to me. In fact, I was caught completely flat-footed by my son’s recent academic struggles.

If I’m making excuses, I’d say that I had trust that he was performing well in school. After starting 6th grade with two consecutive semesters of straight A’s, I didn’t even bother checking his year-ending grades. Those would have clearly showed a downward slide – a ride that has not relented.

After seeing more F’s this fall, I realized my kid’s failing school. My parenting reaction followed, what I’d assume is, a normal trajectory:

My Kid’s Failing Stage 1: Finding fault

I needed to find the reason for Yosef’s academic slide – like, NOW!

Was the work too hard?

Why didn’t the teachers contact us before it got this bad?

Did the busy, activity-filled life we lead contribute?

I became quickly frustrated that I couldn’t pinpoint the problem – or the solution. The truth, likely, took in a little of these factors.

Stage 2: He loses EVERYTHING!

I quickly turned my attention from finding the cause to attempting to make my son’s life miserable. Yosef was the only “thing” I could think to blame. After all, he did this, no one else. Right?

Now that I’d diagnosed Yosef as the key contributor, I was dead set on levying a punishment that would be forever cemented in his mind when he thought about slacking off again.

First, I snatched his phone. No more communicating with anyone other than US!

Next, I pulled him from all activities. You like football, huh? It’s GONE! GONE, GONE, GONE!

Finally, I relegated him to manual labor. I hope you enjoy lawn mowing, son. And weed pulling, room cleaning, and shelf dusting … the house better be IMMACULATE!

Taking everything was just the tough love he needed. I was really parenting, I thought, for a fleeting moment or two.

My Kid’s Failing Stage 3: What is my punishment teaching him?

When I finally took a breather, I realized that while punishments had quenched the appetite of my anger, they may not be teaching him a life lesson. In fact, nothing I had done in reaction to my son’s poor grades had anything to do with academics.

A simple question echoed in my mind, “Do I have a clue about how an A student becomes an F student seemingly overnight?”

The longer I thought about it, the more I reasoned that quickly jumping into multiple punishments might be a missed opportunity.

Stage 4: I can’t take EVERYTHING away

After having a few more days to think, I decided to soften my approach. I would sit down with Yosef to plan for getting the academic train back on the tracks.

My son and I talked about being organized, not getting behind, openly communicating and how to keep on top of our busy lives. I offered my help and Yosef, finally, agreed that he could use it from time to time. He agreed for daily school check-ins before leaving for any extracurricular activities. I agreed to be more proactive, checking his progress on the school’s online system each night and helping craft a plan for the next day’s priorities.

Our chat felt good – like we were more like trusted colleagues than father and son. It probably helped that in doing so, I didn’t erupt into a screaming, short, blonde version of the late comic Sam Kinison.

As we wrapped up, together, we decided that Yosef could play football. I wanted him to stay active and social.

Understanding the need to have a way to communicate, I allowed him to carry his phone under the stipulation I checked it each day when he arrived home.

Instead of automatically signing Yosef up for all household chores, I limited the manual labor to mostly yard work (which, honestly, I hate anyway).

My Kid’s Failing Stage 5: Trying to mend the fences.

Like most decisions I make on behalf of my kids, I found myself reflecting on the parenting job I’m doing more than obsessing about improving Yosef’s grades. Part of me felt like I’d been too easy – continuing to give my son the benefit of the doubt that he hadn’t earned.

I wondered if my actions would even have an impact on Yosef’s grades and, more importantly, our relationship.

Suddenly, I started to think about working harder to stay informed for my other kids – all of whom are in elementary school where grades seem an afterthought to having fun and trying. I brainstormed about how truly present I am with them each day.

Mostly, though, I thought about having wished away my kids’ early years of limited sleep and diaper changing. I sat longing for the timeout chair to correct any wrongs and erase the cloud of adolescent misbehavior that doesn’t seem to lift.

Parenting an older child is different – requiring more.

Maybe I needed a timeout to realize it.

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

I’m not that great of a parent. But sometimes my bad parenting actually works out. Some of my parenting fails are actually kind of wins!

I made a list of things I do wrong as a parent that actually make my sons happy so who cares … besides me, 10 years from now, when my instant gratification policy has turned them both into monsters.

My Nine Best Parenting Fails

• Co-sleeping – Sometimes it’s by choice, sometimes it’s because I can’t be bothered to bring him back to his room. But my 5-year-old loves it, and assuming that he grows out of it before he’s say, fifteen, I’m not too concerned.
• Skipping the bath – I hate bath time. My 5-year-old hates it, too. Well, he hates getting in it, but then he also hates getting out of it, because 5-year-olds are INSANE. Sometimes I wish kids could shed their skin like snakes.
• Giving in to snack requests – Sometimes you just need them to shut up.
• Swearing – I don’t swear in front of my kids anywhere near as much as my wife does, but it happens. It’s not too big a deal, or at least it won’t be until he throws down an F-bomb at school. But so long as we stress that swears are “adult words,” it’s no harm, no foul. (This is what I keep telling myself.)
• Giving in to dessert requests – Sometimes you just need them to shut up.
• Showing them inappropriate movies – Sometimes you just need them to shut up. And you’ve run out of animated movies. And you’re desperate to watch something you actually enjoy. And you’re desperate to show them something you love. When I was a kid, I saw a lot of movies that would be deemed inappropriate today, and I turned out totally fine SHUT UP.
• Giving in to screen-time requests – Sometimes you just need them to shut up.
• Taking them to bars – Half of our weekend is spent at bars, and since we’re good people who love our children and who can’t afford babysitters, we bring them along! Not to dive bars, but to beer gardens, and breweries, and pubs. In Brooklyn, this is not out of the ordinary. In fact, it’s one of the best parts! Last weekend, we went to Threes Brewing for lunch and our son was like the eighth baby in there. Detective Munch constantly asks to go to our favorite beer garden – where he and his friends play in the dirt along tons of other children while me and my friends drink craft beers – and often requests a visit to another favorite bar because he loves their burgers. Come football season, every Sunday will be a funday, for me and my kids! America FTW!
• Skipping teeth-brushing – They’re still baby teeth, he’ll be fine. Besides, I’m drunk.

Most of these parenting fails are not really going to impact my kids negatively, except maybe that last one because — yikes — that breath is rank. In fact, most of it makes them happy. And it makes me happy. So I have no guilt over it.

Yet.

A version of this first ran on Dad and Buried. Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

Mistakes failures suck. No. We meant mistakes “or” failures suck. Or should it be “and”? Oops.

No one is perfect, they say, even though you try valiantly to be the perfect parent. And neither is your child, no matter what you post of your social media channels. So we have some mistaken failure advice, er, mistake and failure advice for you.

In the latest of our “City Dads Sessions” video series, our intrepid Los Angeles Dads Group co-organizer Trevor Mulligan asks several fathers for their best parenting tips on dealing with life’s many wrong turns.

Here is what they had to say:

“Mistakes Failures” broken dish photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash.

“Whether you get As or Cs will be irrelevant. No single letter of the alphabet will raise or lower your value to me.”

Dear Daughter,

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry you’re so stressed out right now. Finals week is always tough. You’re a high school sophomore: no longer a child, not yet a college student. I’m sorry you have to care more about grades now than you did when you were younger. Yeah, yeah, yeah — this is the year grades apparently count, the first year of grades that college admissions counselors will look at when you apply to schools.

I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful as you study. But I’ll be honest: I have no freaking idea what you’re talking about any more. I mean, I’ve heard of covalent bonds and Avogadro’s Number. I remember doing quadratic equations and reading about the Louisiana Purchase. But truth be told, your academic knowledge surpassed mine years ago. I’ve been faking it since you were in eighth grade.

That’s how it should be. Our kids should be smarter than us. It makes me feel safe to know your generation has the potential to wield more knowledge, and do so more wisely, than your predecessors. But that doesn’t help you when you have a final exam in AP History, Honors English, AP Chemistry and AP Math — all in the course of two days.

I’m not one of those parents who feels high school teachers today assign too much homework. I’m a college teacher (in English — the one subject you’ve never needed help with), and I can confidently state that when you get to college, the workload will be much more intense. This means that if college is in your future, now is the time to tackle the rigors of academia head on with as much confidence as you can.

Today when you came home from school, you had your Worried Face on. You and I sat down together, and you told me about how concerned you are that you’re going to bomb your exams, which will result in a parade of horrible grades on your report card, which in turn will be a sledgehammer to the kneecap of your future. In short, you said you’re afraid you won’t get into college and will instead be living in a box under the freeway. (OK, you didn’t actually say box. The furrows in your anxiety-ridden brow did.)

You were then quiet for a minute.

You took a breath and said that, more than worrying about your own future, you are most worried that if you get bad grades, I will be disappointed in you.

That is what’s worrying you most today. My disappointment. Not the fear of being rejected by colleges, not the idea of under-the-freeway real estate, not anything having to do with your future. You’re worried about the look on my face if I see low grades on your report card next month.

Oh, Sweet Girl.

That’s not something you need to worry about because it’s never going to happen.

What disappointment means, doesn’t mean

Here’s what you should understand about disappointment:

Sure, sometimes parents feel disappointment in their kids. Maybe we see our children behave poorly at a restaurant after years of being taught good manners at home. Or we learn they’ve been sneaking out of their room after bedtime and playing games on the family computer for weeks, which they know perfectly well they’re not supposed to do. Maybe we catch our kids in a lie about something: ditching school, shoplifting, treating a friend poorly, whatever, and we feel disappointed in what they’ve done. Because they’ve been “raised better.”

But even in those moments, disappointment is usually pretty unproductive. See, disappointment is what we feel when we have some expectation about how something should be, and then it turns out differently. (Expectations are, as a general rule, pretty dangerous.)

And when you’re a parent, there’s this extra complication: we sometimes feel that our kids are representing us when they go out into the world and do their thing. That’s actually a major danger. We think things like, “I was good at calculus in high school. So you should be, too.” Or: “I was always comfortable at parties in high school, and good at making friends. Why can’t you just be a little more outgoing?”

Bad mojo, that stuff.

I want you to know where disappointment comes from and where it sometimes lurks in the darker corners of a parent’s brain.

And I tell you that so I can tell you what I really want to tell you, which is this:

I’m just as human as the next guy, and I walk around with expectations in my head like everyone else: expectations for myself, for others, for the world.

But you will never have to prove your worth to me, with grades or anything else.

As you get older and have relationships with other people, they will put their expectations on you. And you on them. Sometimes those expectations will be met, and sometimes they won’t. You sometimes will even feel disappointment in me (I know — shocking thought).

But it’s my job not to put that crap on you. All I want you to do is try. Whether you get As or Cs will be irrelevant. No single letter of the alphabet will raise or lower your value to me. No letter will affect how much I love you. So out of all the things in the world to worry about, you do not need to worry about that.

Do try hard, do use your strengths, do work with your challenges and do attempt your best. The letter grades you get in chemistry, history and pre-calc will not change your worth, and they will not put a fence around my love for you.

Take your exams, do what you can do, and let’s go have pizza afterward to celebrate that you are a 15-year-old person in the world, working her way steadily through challenges.

Love,

Dad

P.S.  If you get stuck on a multiple choice question and have to guess, choose C. Trust me.

Disappointment photo: d_t_vos Lonely girl via photopin (license)

Does anybody else suck at adulting?

You know what I mean. The doing of the stuff. Engaging in basic Life Maintenance. Paying the bills on time. Thinking ahead about what my family will have for dinner will be tomorrow. Signing field trip forms on time. Filing things before a deadline. Keeping track of when the oil was last changed in the car. Reminding other people to do things. Reminding myself to do things.

Can I engage in active adulting when I have to? Yes. Yes, I can. But it’s a struggle. I’ve never NOT paid a late fee for my car registration (which ultimately ends up being more expensive than the registration itself). I have never once thought to myself: You know, I should probably take that steak out of the freezer to defrost now, so we can eat it for dinner 10 hours from now.

Ask me how many times I’ve had to reschedule my daughter’s dentist appointments because I lost that little reminder card they gave me.

Please say I’m not the only one.

Assess your suckage

Maybe you’re not sure if you share my problem. It’s probably good to do a quick self-assessment. How do you know when you’re not good at adulting?

• If it’s been more than six months since you had your car washed.
• If paying your bills on time is rarer than Bigfoot sightings.
• If you shop for groceries without a list.
• If you come back from buying groceries, realize you forgot toilet paper/bread/milk/toothpaste/whatever, and say to yourself “Dammit, I have to remember to make a list!” (Yet never actually do.)
• If your reminder for having your car’s transmission fluid checked is the sound of your engine dry heaving on the freeway before the smoke starts billowing out from the hood.
• If you find yourself receiving late payment notices from the cable company and you continually convince yourself that they’re just bluffing with those empty threats to turn off your Wi-Fi.
• If you find yourself saying defensively to your accountant, “No, YOU missed your extension deadline!”
• If your kid is the one reminding you that tomorrow night is Back to School Night.
• If you’re still not completely sure what a 401(k) is.
• If your kid’s typical school lunch consists of string cheese, a bag of Cheetos and whatever loose grapes were rolling around in the crisper drawer.
• If you routinely pay fifty bucks to have Fed Ex overnight Mother’s/Father’s Day cards to your parents. Even though the card itself cost $2.

No? Not you? Just me? Damn.

I’ll clarify a little bit. Clearly, I can function in the world as required. My taxes do get done, my bills do get paid, the house continues to stand, the cable never actually gets turned off. I adult when I truly have to. But for whatever reason, these minuscule tasks remain very difficult for me.

Excuses, excuses … excuse me

If I had five kids, I’d have a great excuse for why the little things slip through the cracks. But I just have ONE kid. One medium-sized human. As much as I’d like to, I can’t blame her for this. I know too many parents who have their shit together, and they have way more kids than I do.

I’m sure there are perfectly good psychological reasons for my problem. And I’m pretty sure I know which reasons are not responsible. For example, I don’t think my ego is so vast that I think I’m too good to do these things, or that someone else should be in charge of maintaining my life for me.

Every January, I make a New Year’s resolution about getting better at all that stuff. Then every February, I discover that the weird smell in the car is actually a ham and cheese sandwich I left under the passenger seat six months ago.

The best part about all this is that the entire time I’m barely scraping by in my adulting, I’m simultaneously criticizing myself for not doing it better, not being a better grown-up, not correcting old patterns, not learning, yaddah yaddah. It’s a truly awesome form of self-sabotage. Which I’d prefer not to pass along to my daughter. The fear of which perpetuates the whole brilliant system! See, it goes like this:

1. Fail at adulting.
2. Feel bad about failing at adulting.
3. Feel bad that modeling poor adulting will teach teenage daughter bad habits.
4. Which itself is poor adulting.
5. Feel bad about the second circle of bad adulting.
6. Repeat.

Is this how I thrive?

I don’t know. Maybe I actually feel better when I’m feeling bad about myself.

Like so many humans, maybe, just maybe, it doesn’t feel right to me when my life is not frazzled, when I’m turning in forms on time, or when I have an organized family dinner schedule for the week. Maybe when I’m busy feeling bad about those little things that aren’t getting done, I conveniently don’t have time to worry about some of the bigger looming life challenges. It’s possible that if I have fresh milk in the fridge, and know where my car keys are and have a week’s worth of family dinners planned out and written down, then I’ll find myself with some extra time and brain space to fill with thoughts about the real adulting tasks that I’m not addressing. Crafting the next 10 years of my career.  Figuring out a financial plan that will allow me to pay for my daughter’s college in a few years. Paying more attention to my health.

It’s much easier to trash myself for not taking out the trash, than for not figuring out the future. And maybe, just maybe, if I start getting more active with some of those big-picture issues, the little things will fall into place too. I’ll no longer forget to buy toilet paper. Bills will be paid on time. Deadlines will be met.

I’d explore this issue further, and describe all the ways I swear I’m going to be better at adulting in the future, but I really need to send this post to my editor. It’s three weeks late.

Photo credit: Dr John2005 A for Austerity via photopin (license)

Failure at something is how we learn. We try, we fail, we adjust, make notes, turn a tweak and try again. We may eventually win or we may find something else along the way that takes us in a whole new direction.

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“I’m not good at it,” he said, as if that were reason enough not to try.

“What does ‘good’ have to do with it?” I asked.

“I can’t do it.”

“You won’t do it,” I corrected. “There’s a difference.”

We were standing outside the batting cage with a handful of quarters and helmets that smelled of sweat and disinfectant. I had planned the outing as a bit of fun, a chance for some bonding and a hint of exercise on an otherwise lazy spring day. I never considered that a few swings against the machine could be met with clouds of doubt and hesitation.

Granted, he isn’t a fan of sports in general and I knew that going in. I get it. I never really cared for sports as a kid either, but unlike him my fears were somewhat justified by my gangly lack of grace and the coordination of a wet noodle — obstacles he need not overcome, fit as he is, strong and agile.

His was just an assumption of dislike based on a bat being in his hands where a video game should be — the collective murmurs of society and stereotypes.

“I’m not good at hitting,” he said as we watched a kid in the cage hit ball after ball, the ping, ping, ping of her bat sending each high into the net like some jet-powered butterfly.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “What is ‘good,’ and why does it matter?”

“I can’t hit all the balls.”

“Nobody can.”

“I can’t hit very far.”

“Distance is relative.”

He stood there, somewhat flummoxed and slightly amused. I could see the wheels turning in his head, playing at jokes and weighing his options. I get that, too.

“Look,” I said. “Good is not a thing. We aren’t at the batting cages because you’re trying out for the Dodgers; we are here to have fun. I would hate to think that you wouldn’t do something you enjoyed just because you didn’t believe you were good enough. Good is for people yelling at their TV set like their opinion means something. This is a game. You play it.”

I felt myself searching through my mental archive of ballgame monologues, the lollygagging and lack of crying that Hollywood has offered as silver screen inspiration, but none of it fit our moment. Those were words of make-believe, and oftentimes Costner.

“There is no gauge for success here,” I added. “Except fun.”

“But what if I don’t hit any of the balls?”

“What if you don’t try and never know?”

“I would rather not do it at all than be bad at it.”

And there it was. The fear of failure, at least his understanding of it, was stronger than his desire to try.

“Failing at something does not make you a failure,” I said.

“Isn’t that exactly what it means?” he asked.

“It seems that way. Everybody is always focused on winning like it alone defines success. That isn’t true, no matter how many times you hear it. Failing at something is how we learn. We try, we fail, we adjust, make notes, turn a tweak and try again. We may continue to fail. We may get better than ‘good.’ We may win or we may find something else along the way that takes us in a whole new direction. Failing is where learning comes from.”

He looked like he was listening.

“It’s my turn,” he said as the cage gate opened.

“Are you ready to have some fun?” I asked.

“I’m ready to try,” he said, though I’m not sure he believed it.

He put the quarters in the slot and squinted toward the sunshine.

“What do I do now?” he asked.

“Just swing and smile,” I said.

And that is what he did.

Photo for “Failure” by Whit Honea.